Most universities like to keep a couple of secrets. One of the most heavily guarded secrets is the truth about legacy admissions. Some top schools, like Brown, barely publish anything about legacies. We love getting to the bottom of tough questions, especially ones important to our clients. We talk to insiders, sift through data, and watch trends closely to get as much information as we can to help our students. We have been doing a series about legacy admission at top schools. We get a lot of questions about Brown (mostly because they don't make a lot of info readily avaible.) With this in mind, we wanted to answer some of the most common questions we get from parents about Brown.
How does Brown define legacy?
Brown officially never directly defines who they consider a “legacy.” The word doesn’t even appear in their admissions materials. However, their school newspaper has written about legacy status and refers to them as an applicant “whose parent went to Brown.” This is also fairly standard for the Ivy League. Some also count grandparents, but for the most part, when we are talking about Ivy League legacies, we are talking about the children of alums.
How many legacies are on campus?
Schools usually publish a breakdown of accepted students every year. This can be in the form of a class profile or freshman survey. Usually, in these profiles, the percentage of legacy students for each freshman class is listed. However, Brown does not do this. They do release a freshman class profile yearly, but they emit legacy data.
However, for the Class of 2025, The Brown Daily Herald published that “Ten percent of Brown students are legacy students.” In the past, they have said the past they have seen 10-12% of freshman students have legacy status per year. This is a fairly standard percentage. We have seen that at most top schools, the percentage of legacies in recent freshman classes often hovers around 12%. They also say, “We don't know how this translates directly to admission rates.” They are hinting at something important. Most families care more about admissions rates than percentages on campus.
Most schools never outright publish a legacy admission rate unless they are forced to by a court (Harvard and some California schools have had to do this due to admissions scandals.) Having a legacy rate higher than the overall acceptance rate is controversial. Most schools do, but actually saying it can often land them in hot water. While we can’t get this data, we do know a bit more about how Brown sees legacy when it comes to admissions.
What is being a legacy “worth” when it comes to admissions?
Legacy is “one among many, many factors” in making admission decisions, says Brown University President Christina Paxson. She is echoed by University Spokesperson Brian Clark, “The consideration of legacy status is a very, very small consideration compared to other attributes... We don’t admit students based on categories, we don’t release application and acceptance data in a way that suggests we do." But what does that exactly mean? Pretty much, it is that they look at legacy, but the applicant has to be qualified outside of their status to be considered.
Brown uses a holistic admissions model. This means they consider a wide range of factors for admission. This includes grades, test scores, essays, and their background. While they look at legacy status, the rest of the application needs to be up to Brown’s standards… and their standards are high.
For the Class of 2026, Brown’s acceptance rate was only about 5%. This is incredibly low. The applicant pool for the Class of 2026 was the largest applicant pool to date. They had 4,000 more students apply than they had in the previously highest year. With numbers this impacted, it’s important to stand out as an applicant. Being a legacy will help this, but it’s not enough.
There is a statistic that gets thrown around when talking about legacy admissions. It’s from Harvard, but it’s a good way to think about legacy admissions. In 2019ish, Harvard’s legacy acceptance rate was around 30% even when their overall acceptance rate was 6%. This was seen as a scandalously high legacy acceptance rate. It was ludicrously high. But if you think about it critically, while it was easier for a legacy to get in, still the majority of legacies didn’t get in. 70% didn’t and we don’t think Brown’s legacy acceptance rate isn't as high. The important part about this data is while legacy helps, most legacies don’t get in. If your student is serious, they have to stand out against other legacies.
There are a couple of ways to stand out as a legacy and we aren’t just talking about donating a new sports field (though it never hurts… trust us). Having a strong and interesting application, however, is a more obtainable route for most families. Every applicant needs good grades and scores, but dynamic writing, a carefully chosen resume, and a professionally crafted application turns a good application into a great application. There are a lot of trends, rules, and tricks that most people don’t know about when it comes to making a great application. That’s where we come in. We do this every day and work with highly motivated legacies to ensure they have the edge.
We know it might sound self-serving, but we highly suggest working with a counselor if Brown is at the top of an applicant’s list. Their admissions have become super impacted in recent years and working with a professional can easily make the difference between getting in or not. Legacy will only take them so far. With a 5% acceptance rate, they need all the edge they can get.
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